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Description
From Mamoru Oshii, the world-acclaimed director of Ghost in the Shell comes an award-winning story of an exciting but endless war with heroes too young to understand the meaning of their battles. A group of eternally young fighter pilots known as Kildren experience the sudden loss of innocence as they battle the enemy in astonishing dogfights above the clouds. With his only childhood memory consisting of intense flight training, the fearless teenage pilot Yuichi's dogfights coexist with his struggle to find his missing past. When his beautiful, young female commander Suito is reluctant to discuss the fate of the pilot that Yuichi is replacing - or the strangely perfect condition of that pilot's former aircraft - Yuichi's curiosity becomes heightened.Amazon.com
Mamoru Oshii's The Sky Crawlers (2008) plays like a mixture of Top Gun and Serial Experiments Lain. Although teenage fighter pilot Yuichi lacks Tom Cruise's good looks, he's the ace of his unit at the Rostock Corporation, performing elaborate maneuvers and bringing down enemy planes. Yuichi and his fellow pilots are mysterious beings known as "Kildren:" they never age, but remain teenagers their entire lives. When commander Suito learns that the Kildren are products of a mysterious genetic experiment, she begins to suspect that she and the pilots are used, discarded, and replaced, like so many spare parts. Yuichi doesn't just resemble Jinroh, the former pilot of his plane (and Suito's lover); he's the reincarnation of Jinroh. These revelations would pack more punch if the characters weren't such nonentities. Yuichi and the other pilots express so little emotion, they make Keanu Reeves seem like a dynamic presence. Oshii uses computer animation for the elaborate aerial dogfights, although the realistically rendered, three-dimensional aircraft never mesh with the flat, two-dimensional characters. Sky Crawlers had a decidedly mixed reaction in Japan, and its limited theatrical release in the U.S. failed to generate much excitement. It's a disappointing effort from the creator of the watershed Ghost in the Shell. (Rated PG-13: Violence, sexual situations, alcohol and tobacco use) --Charles SolomonSimilarProduct
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Customer reviews
A Slow and Dreamy Walk Through the Clouds 
by .. Sniff Code (Somewhere out there)
I went and saw The Sky Crawlers at Toronto's 08 Film Festival, and wasn't surprised when most of the audience seemed to walk away feeling a bit unaffected by the movie. The film's director Mamoru Oshii has a cinematic style that is nothing if not an acquired taste -- one that domestic theaters are reticent to acquire.
Any person who has addicted themselves to the traditional Aristotelian story structure will find themselves feeling lost and aimless by the middle of Act 2 in Sky Crawlers and most of Oshii's films. If there even is an Act 2 in the first place. The big bang opening action sequence between the fighter pilots in Sky Crawlers is about as formulaic as Oshii is willing to get with any of his movies. After that, he transitions from speed-of-light action to speed-of-life storytelling where his characters and their dialoug all have the same pacing and meandering of real life. That means, if you're used to Hollywood's colorful characters bloated with one-liners and a plot that runs straight for the end-zone, than you'll probably find Oshii's films to be slow. Maybe even boring.
It also means that you're probably not his audience.
Oshii's primary audience seems to be himself, as most of his characters seem to be alter-egos helping him resolve his own philosophical conflicts and questions about society. His secondary audience is anybody trying to do the same for themselves. I don't mind watching Oshii talk to himself in his movies since the dialog is so intelligent and unpretentious. For the most part the characters say what they mean, and mean what they say. They can't afford to do otherwise, because we are finding them at dark, introspective moments in their lives which is usually when a person is pruned of all pretense. This is precisely why I find Oshii's cinematic language so refreshing. Despite his graphically lush visuals, his movies manage to have a closer kinship to literature than cinema. Listening may be more important than looking in his films. For example, the characters in Sky Crawlers speak Japanese on the ground, but switch to English when at war. This effect seems to be commentary on how American occupation has shifted the habits of Japan's youth, which according to Oshii, has become more violent.
There are times when I fount myself worried about the fate of this film. Oshii offered a very sincere "message to the youth" before the release of this film, indicating that he does want young people to appreciate the movie. And yet the sobering nature of the film may struggle in penetrating the narcissistic shell of the people he hoped to reach. Oshii's work is smart and the crowd that he hopes to touch is usually smart-a**. Two different things.
If nothing else, this movie will find a home with an intelligent crowd that is already familiar with his approach to film. I'm glad that this movie was picked up for DVD release by Sony. Oshii's discipline and intelligence is a prize import for American film viewers.
An amazing movie by .. Lucy Kusanagi ()
When I originally read the review for this movie, I ignored it. The American summary makes it sound like an action packed shooter that, quite frankly, I had no interest in. But then I read that it was directed by Oshii, and my interest was peaked.
I have never disliked a single piece of work by Oshii, from Angel's Egg, through both Ghost in the Shell movies, and most especially Jin-Roh. I love the way he tells his stories, and how he draws out the characters to make them more than just plot driven vehicles.
And Sky Crawlers is no exception. It is a beautiful masterpiece of a movie that had me in shocked tears by the end. It isn't about airplanes shooting each other out of the sky, and it isn't truly about the war. And, for anyone who is looking for two hours of amazing flying fights, this isn't your movie.
While the fights in this movie are gorgeous and spectacular, they are not the point, and they certainly do not take up two hours worth of time. They are placed calmly and timely, and accentuate the storyline like a few drops of cream in a finely brewed tea.
The characters come alive, their suffering, their purpose, their torture. And, in the end, it leaves me wanting more, but knowing that I have already seen more. That the characters are old friends, and this was a fond memory in a photo album that I flipped through on a warm summer's day. These were people I got to know, jokes we laughed at, tears we cried.
And that's what the movie really is about; the people.
While I don't know anything about the soundtrack being different on the American version than it is on the Japanese release (something I am going to look into immediately after I publish this review), I do know that, even as it stands, it is still another beautiful piece by Kenji Kawai.
The most depressingly beautiful airplane anime ever made by .. lain4ever (Los Angeles, CA)
Director Mamoru Oshii has pushed the envelope once again with his newest film, "The Sky Crawlers."
This movie is a complex, but stunning film about teenagers trapped in a melancholy world of repetitive aerial combat.
The movie opens up at a snail's pace, with isolated, depressed male pilots known as Kildren, with no other amusement other than eating at the meat pie diner and having sex in the mansion with other women.
In their planes, they fight enemy planes from a country known only as the Loutan. However, most of their existence is a boring world, in which they never grow old. All they know is that they are children, who could never possibly gain access into the adult world. The only threat to their existence is the unknown airplane above the clouds, known only as "The Teacher."
Perhaps it's a somewhat excessive visual representation of the Japanese life of otaku, young men who trap themselves in their home, fearful of the criticism from the adults in the faceless corporate world. The characters have the most depressing and nonchalant dialogue ever heard in an anime. However, director Mamoru Oshii makes it all work.
The film is a deadpan "Catch-22"-styled story, in which the main character, Yuichi, is trying to figure out exactly who he is. Although he has hardly any memory of his past, he offers his love interest, Suito Kusanagi, the hope for change in their depressing life as Kildren.
Admittedly, the aerial dogfight in the end of the film is an impossibly excessive and violent end. However, given that the concept of the film is out of this world in the first place, it all works beautifully. Although some anime fans might find the film boring at first, "The Sky Crawlers" has plenty of earth-shaking emotional sequences, in which Kusanagi desperately plays with a gun in her hand on a particularly depressing night out.
This is one of the best anime films I have ever seen, filled with some spectacular dogfights with surreal imagery. But although there is plenty of action, the dogfights pale in comparison to the heartbreaking emotional exchanges throughout the film. While American audiences may be easily turned off, this is a true masterpiece by Mamoru Oshii.
Intelligent and Emotionally Involving by .. m-chan ()
An astonishing film, visually beautiful and deeply moving. However, it won't be for everyone, especially those who want to sit back and be entertained in an effortless way. Oshii isn't a filmmaker who caters to that kind of audience. I have admired his other films, especially Jin Roh, which for my money is one of the greatest animated films ever, and a great film in its own right (animation aside). If you've seen Jin Roh and liked it, you will probably find The Sky Crawlers worth your time. I was surprised at how much I came to care about certain characters and how emotionally involving the film became. It was also thought-provoking, posing questions about the role of warfare in human society; and had its exciting moments during aerial combat sequences.
Be sure to watch through to the end of the credits, as there is a tiny epilogue of sorts at the very end.
Sky Crawlers by .. Rhys D. Williams (Dorchester, MA)
Okay...if you are a Oshi fan, then you realize that his films are very much like that of Kubrick. They lack linear progression that we are used to in western style film making. That is to say that the ideas are presented and then we are shown why, unlike Hollywood that will spoon-feed you the story frame by frame until it is wrapped up in a nice little package that makes sense. Well life rarely cleans up well and the pace of life can at times be mundane and confusing. The Sky Crawlers is one such film. It's pace is slow and deliberate. The background of the protagonists and the world that they inhabit is vague and distant, but seemingly no less mundane and repetitive then that of our main characters. The "war" that they fight is without end for there can be no victors of loosers...just a balance of power that shifts as one side gains ground. The antagonist of the story is a myth and enigma. He is never seen in person and he is all powerful to those he encounters. The lives of the pilots who are forever adolesents or kildren as they are called is one that has no meaning outside of fighting this war the is between corporations, not nations. I felt in some ways that I was getting to see one of the soilders in the never ending war of 1984.
The characters that exist as adults seem to perform their tasks like kildred's repetitive lives. We see the same old man sitting outside of the cafe, the people inside are always inside, always at the same table, the same workers are always serving the people whenever someone goes inside. The local whores, as one may assume they are, take care of the pilots that venture out for R&R. The technology in the film seem to never have advanced any further then it needed to in their world. Why would it when progress mean progressive thought, and that would be dangerous in a world the relied on a subduded populous the garnered entertainment on a war that made them as people appreciate their peace. A world that the battles fought are done so at the expense and harm of no private citizen. but rest assured that it's splendor and horror with be televised to the masses complete with numbers of casualties and losses.
This film was remarkable to me, and to anyone that enjoys a movie that days later will have you thinking about the complexities of it. Yet it appears so simplistic on it's surface. The animation is lovely, the technology is fascinating and if you are a WW2 plane buff you will have blast looking at the mismosh of classic planes all put into various new aircraft to come up with something really cool. Stay for the ending credits or fast forward to the end to see the final scene. It is very enlightening and helps to show why our main character has the feeling of deja vu throughout the movie. if you liked 12 monkeys, 1984, Jin Roh, or alternate history stories and really well written sci-fi then this is for you. If you want shoot em ups and vanilla story telling then avoid this, you will be bored.